Coincidence? I think not.

Alright, I had to stop the Tactics of Truth Suppression posts because, well to be honest, I’m stuck. I can’t think of examples using any political party. So if anyone is reading this blog of mine and would like to discuss these concepts with me in the hopes of me getting over this writer’s block, then leave a comment.

So I leave you with this…
Remember Harper in his sweater vest stroking the cat (not a euphemism). It was pointed out to me that he sorta looks likes the villain from Inspector Gadget.
Here’s both pictures, what do you think?

Tactics of Truth Suppression #11

Number 11

Establish and rely upon fall-back positions. Using a minor matter or element of the facts, take the “high road” and “confess” with candor that some innocent mistake, in hindsight, was made — but that opponents have seized on the opportunity to blow it all out of proportion and imply greater criminalities which, “just isn’t so.” Others can reinforce this on your behalf, later. Done properly, this can garner sympathy and respect for “coming clean” and “owning up” to your mistakes without addressing more serious issues.

Health Minister – Body Bag situation
Here’s a quote from her apology:

“It was insensitive and offensive,” she said. “As minister of health and as an aboriginal, I am offended. To all who took offence at what occurred, I want to say that I share your concern, and I pledge to get to the bottom of it.”

Ok so the Cons got the first part of that right… now onto the blown out of proportion site by the Opposition?
Oh this is just making my writing too easy:

Aglukkaq said anyone suggesting body bags were the government’s solution to H1N1 was “sensationalizing this situation.”
The results of the inquiry will be made public, she said.

Look at that! They followed number 11 to a T. She apologized, made it personal, said the Opposition was out of line, and they’re going to make the results public. By her making it personal she garners sympathy. I mean come on, she’s a female rookie MP from Nunavut and she speaks quite softly for a politician, so getting sympathy is easy for her to do.

Another situation that shows this is the whole Raitt sexy isotopes issue.
She didn’t apologize at first, but when she did, she laid on the water works and made it personal by speaking about her personal experiences with cancer. She blamed previous Liberal governments for not doing anything for 10 years (even though the Cons had been in power for like 3 yrs at that point and could have acted) and she even fired the staffer who left the recording behind! Talk about garnering public sympathy!

One last example of this is John Baird apologizing to Toronto for telling them to fuck off. He really hit the nail on the head with this one. Let’s look again at the beginning of this tactic:
“take the high road and confess… it was an innocent mistake”
Now look at Baird’s apology

“I was speaking out of frustration, and I certainly expressed that,” John Baird said in the House of Commons on Tuesday. “This morning I phoned Mayor Miller and apologized. The mayor and I both agreed — let’s look to the future. Let’s continue to build on the important investments that we need to make in public transit and we committed to work with them over the next two weeks to make it happen.”

BANG!

The Conservatives really work with this one, which makes sense because they USE IT A LOT. They make a lot of mistake. There’s a reason why Harper controls what they say so much and this is why. Most instances where they do apologize it’s because a tape or some documents were leaked. So this is how they speak behind closed doors. I’m not saying the other parties aren’t guilty of it either but the Cons get caught quite a bit. Plus they make a lot of mistakes in public too.

Point being the Cons know how to work an apology to their political advantage while denying us the truth the whole time. Seems like a lot of the public falls for it hook, line and sinker.

Tactics of Truth Suppression #10

Number 10

Associate opponent charges with old news. A derivative of the straw man — usually, in any large-scale matter of high visibility, someone will make charges early on which can be or were already easily dealt with. Where it can be foreseen, have your own side raise a straw man issue and have it dealt with early on as part of the initial contingency plans. Subsequent charges, regardless of validity or new ground uncovered, can usually then be associated with the original charge and dismissed as simply being a rehash without need to address current issues — so much the better where the opponent is or was involved with the original source.

If you read message boards like I do, you’ll see a few common themes with Con supporters; they still bring up AdScam and they like to say that the Liberals have no policies (since they haven’t released a platform under Ignatieff but to be fair we haven’t had an election and look at Harpie’s record on platform releases). Anyways I digress.
They continually bring up these same old charges and have yet to come up with new ones, even when the opportunity is ripe.

The same goes for the Cons themselves, they like to still blame previous Liberal governments for mistakes, mistakes they have done nothing themselves to rectify. Now that the Cons are the previous government, they still enjoy blaming the Liberals past mistakes. They still do little to fix the problems for example the isotopes issue. The Cons had known for years there were problems and waited till they had no choice and yet they still blame the Liberals.

They also like to say that Ignatieff is “just visiting” whether this is true or not remains to be seen but they like to rehash this along with quotes Ignatieff has said in the past before he was even with the Liberal party. Although should someone bring up Harper’s past quotes they mention that things have changed.

The Cons like to deny, deny, deny and then deviate. Hey in our fickle society it tends to work so what can I say to that? The problem lies in the fact that people don’t demand more.

Tactics of Truth Suppression #9

Number 9

Play Dumb. No matter what evidence or logical argument is offered, avoid discussing issues with denial they have any credibility, make any sense, provide any proof, contain or make a point, have logic, or support a conclusion. Mix well for maximum effect.

Since I plan on writing up my examples in point form, I’m going to include the example given in order to provide some context.
Example

“Nothing you say makes any sense. Your logic is idiotic. Your facts nonexistent. Better go back to the drawing board and try again.”

Examples of Conservatives doing this:
1) Painting Dion as incapable by mocking his speech and claiming his proposed Carbon Tax plan would raise taxes.
2) Saying that the Liberals proposed EI plan would cost $4billion when in fact it would be closer to $1billion
3) Denying that we were in a recession last election, than calling it a ‘technical recession’ when all other parties and financial institutions said otherwise
4) Blaming previous governments for the isotope crisis by denying their role in the problem
5) Denying global warming and the harsh impact of the oil sands by telling other parties that their information is wrong
6) Again I bring up Question Period because this is your best opportunity to watch the Cons play dumb and avoid facts and answers
7) The whole issue of sending body bags to the reserves. The Cons denied it right away and said that they would look into who sent them. Why not just accept the blame and explain the situation?
8) Not putting out a party platform until after the debates and after advanced polling had closed. This means that during the debates Stevie could play dumb on issues and could also steal other people’s ideas
9) Saying they won’t raise taxes, cut social programs or sell assets to get us out of deficit. Financial experts disagree with this plan
10) Claiming the economy will be worse off should we go into an election right now while it’s slowly recovering.

Those are just a few examples but see the Cons get away with their lies and misinformation because they keep hammering on the same point. It works, especially when you have an audience that is made up of sheep and people who don’t pay attention.
The dumb part works well for the Cons because for the most part that is genuine. Quite possibly the only genuine thing with this bunch.

Tactics of Truth Suppression #8

Number 8

Invoke authority. Claim for yourself or associate yourself with authority and present your argument with enough “jargon” and “minutia” to illustrate you are “one who knows”, and simply say it isn’t so without discussing issues or demonstrating concretely why or citing sources.

I’ll be honest, I am having a difficult time coming up with concrete examples of this one. I actually believe that this is how Stevie always speaks, especially if you watch Question Period. Questions are never directly answered and instead they use a lot of acronyms, numbers, “facts and stats” and then they throw in some adjectives.
It gives the appearance of getting things done but in reality they aren’t. For instance, the Conservatives are spending 5 times more money on ads to promote their ’stimulus money’ than they are to promote H1N1 awareness. Keep in mind, it is our money paying for these Conservatives ads. The fact is, most of the stimulus money hasn’t been spent and to my knowledge there’s an actual clause whereby the cities/provinces must put up the same amount of money as what the Feds will give them, in order to get the money from the Feds. So this means a lot of money probably won’t be spent, and also that a lot of the money has gone to Conservative ridings. But that’s not in their commercials, nor will they say that. I’m not sure where I’m going with this one, but whenever election talk is brought up the Cons like to play “authoritative” and say that an election would harm stimulus cash, which isn’t only a lie but their own policies prevent stimulus cash from rolling out. I guess the point is, is that unless you pay attention you would believe the words spewing out of the Cons mouths on this topic and you’d actually think that they not only knew what they were speaking about, but that they were leaders too.

Ask Stevie or Jimbo a question about the economy and they don’t give you a firm answer, instead they use rhetoric and partisan speak to avoid the answer while still giving off an air of authority and intelligence.
For instance, they never elaborate on how they plan to put us back into a surplus. They (Cons) just says “we won’t raise taxes” but they don’t tell you their plan. They never give details on the isotope crisis, instead they prefer to blame previous-previous governments. They never gave accurate facts on the legality of a coalition government in Canada’s parliamentary system, instead they just said it wasn’t legal and refused to answer questions on it. They refuse to speak about our Afghanistan mission and Stephen will not go on Canadian television to speak to us.

Do all of these things invoke authority? Not to me, but I guess to some blind sheep it would. All I see is someone who is a liar, a partisan petty person who speaks down to us. To each his/her own.